


The Sisterhood of Mutants

by heyjupiter



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-11
Updated: 2011-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-25 22:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/pseuds/heyjupiter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magneto sends Mystique and Angel out on a mission with two purposes: to steal some cutting-edge blueprints and to learn how to get along with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sisterhood of Mutants

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt** : X-Men: First Class - any ladies - gen or f/f: So if you have moral advice / I suggest you just tuck it all away / 'Cause my mood to burn bridges / Is not unlike my mood to dig ditches / Don't cross me on either a day, baby
> 
> Thanks to pocky_slash for the beta!

Mystique lies awake in their fancy hotel room, listening to Angel breathing evenly from the room's other bed. Magneto has sent the two of them out on a mission together. Before they'd left, he had hissed at Mystique, "Patch up whatever squabble you two have with each other. It's affecting the Brotherhood."

She'd glared at him, but muttered, "Yes, sir." He had changed since taking over leadership of the Hellfire Club. He'd renamed it the Brotherhood of Mutants, for one. Dropping the Hellfire Club name was all well and good--it had been silly and childish. And anyway, the Hellfire Club had been Shaw's club. But the Brotherhood? Hello, hadn't he noticed that there were _women_ in the Brotherhood? And how was she supposed to feel about leaving behind her own brother to join the Brotherhood?

She rolls over, experimenting with sleeping on her side. She's still not sure what to think of her new leader. Was he Erik, the man who had encouraged her to love herself the way she was? Or was he Magneto, the man who had essentially declared war on humanity and encouraged her to abandon her badly-injured brother? She flops over to try her other side. Why is she thinking about Magneto, anyway? She's supposed to be figuring out how to be friends with Angel. Angel's been so bitchy to her ever since Mystique joined the Brotherhood. She thought they'd been friends before, when they were the only girls at the CIA facility (aside from Moira, but she was a human).

She wishes she could talk to Charles. Charles would know what to do. But she can't talk to Charles, of course. Instead, she tries to imagine what advice he would give her. She can hear him say, _Raven, you're a wonderful girl. Angel would be lucky to consider you a friend._ Wait, why is she asking imaginary Charles for this advice? Charles was great at charming people, but bad at making deep, personal connections. In his whole life, Mystique thinks he's made just two: herself and Erik, and look how that ended up for him.

She considers what advice Magneto might give her, aside from, _Fix this. Now._ She pictures the ironic tilt in his lips when he says, _Mystique, you're a clever girl. Can you really not imagine why a girl who worked as a stripper might dislike a girl who was raised in the Xaviers' mansion? Can you really not imagine why a girl who's been judged by the color of her skin all her life might envy a girl who can have skin any color she chooses?_

In her head, she says, _But none of that was my fault!_

 _Of course not, my dear, but neither were Angel's circumstances her fault. It is up to you to figure out how to bridge the gap between you. What do you have in common with her?_

 _Well, we're the only girls here! Besides Emma and she's... well, Emma doesn't really spend time with the rest of us. And we both... people think they know things about us because of the way we look. But they don't._

 _Good,_ she imagines Erik saying. _Now fix this._ She sighs. Even in her imagination, Magneto's become a dictator. Still, she feels a little better now, and she finally drifts off to sleep.

Mystique's hungry when she wakes up, but she knows Angel never eats breakfast. Still, she says, "I think I'm going to get room service. Want anything? Coffee or something?"

Angel regards her coolly for a moment before saying, "I'll take a black coffee."

Mystique bites her tongue to keep from demanding a "please." She calls down and orders two coffees, plus a Denver omelet and toast for herself.

When their order arrives, Mystique happily tucks in to her omelet. Angel sips her coffee and watches her eat with a coolly disdainful look on her face. She says, conversationally, "You'd be so fat if it weren't for your mutant power."

Mystique blinks. That isn't true. Her normal blue form gains and loses weight just like anybody else's body, and she's always been pretty trim. Her figure's gotten better since joining the Brotherhood, actually--they all work out and train together a _lot_. She's earned this omelet, dammit, and she's not going to let Angel ruin it. So she counts to ten silently before saying, "Well, maybe I would be if I didn't work out so much, but I don't really have a problem with my figure." She hesitates before asking, "Are you sure you're not hungry?"

Angel shrugs. "It'll all go straight to my hips."

Mystique's not quite sure what to say about that. She'd never been satisfied with any of the answers Charles had given her when she'd worried about her looks. But she says, sincerely, "Angel, you're _beautiful_. And if you gain a few pounds, you'll still be beautiful. And anyway--you're more than your looks, you know."

Angel snorts. "Tell that to my customers."

"Your _former_ customers, Angel. Look, I used to get better tips when I wore low-cut shirts. I knew what men were thinking when they specifically asked to be seated at one of my tables. But I'm not a waitress anymore, and you're not a... dancer. We're mutant liberators now. We have more important things to worry about than our figures."

"Say it, Mystique. I was a stripper."

"All right, you were a stripper. So what? What are you now?"

Angel sets her jaw. "Magneto told you to make friends with me, didn't he? That's what this whole dumb trip is about?"

Mystique takes a long sip of coffee before saying, "Well, yes. I mean, he did say that. But I want to be friends with you too, Angel. We used to be friends. What happened?"

"Yeah. We _used_ to be friends, back at the CIA. Back when we were all just excited to meet others like us. But ever since--ever since you got back here, you've been acting like you're better than everybody, because you're fucking Magneto or whatever."

"I--I am not!" Mystique stutters. "And I don't think I'm _better_ than everybody. That's the whole point of the Brotherhood. We're all equal here."

Angel's face twists into a sneer. "Are we? And which one of us did Magneto give all the cash for this mission to?"

"That's just because--it's better if I pay for things. Because I can be somebody different each time. But we're always doing the same stuff, anyway," Mystique says. She gets up and retrieves her purse off the bedside table. She takes out her wallet and counts out all of its contents. She divides it in half and hands it to Angel. "Here, look. I'm sorry. I really--I really didn't think of it." She should have, though. She remembers how much it had annoyed her to have to rely on Charles for money, until she was old enough to start working.

"Yeah. Well. It's easy for you not to think of it," Angel says, though she does look a bit mollified as she puts the cash into her own wallet.

"Angel, that is _not fair_. Just because I grew up with Charles didn't make me an Xavier, you know? I had to work for my living, too."

"Yeah? And you don't think he would have bailed you out if you had to start working as a stripper?"

"Well--yes," Mystique admits. It's hard for her to think of herself as a stripper. She's not sexy like Angel. "I guess he would have. I pretty much burned that bridge, though."

Angel nods, satisfied.

Mystique adds, "But look, Angel--you and I, we both did what we had to to get by, you know? You--you were a stripper. I broke into Charles's house and imitated his mother."

Angel laughs. "Really?"

Mystique nods and shifts into the form of Sharon Xavier, complete with pearls around her neck and a constipated look on her face. Speaking in Sharon's cool, measured tone, she says, "Charles... persuaded his parents to adopt me. Before that I'd pretty much just gone from house to house taking food, changing myself to match whatever photos I'd found hanging on the walls. I was ten."

"Your family kicked you out when you turned blue, huh?" Angel asks.

Mystique nods once, shifting back to her natural form. Angel says, "Yeah, mine kicked me out when I sprouted wings."

"Well, it was their loss," Mystique says.

"I mean, they supported my sister after she got knocked up, but me? No way."

"We have a new family now," Mystique says.

Angel offers a crooked smile. "A sisterhood."

Mystique lights up. "It's so not cool that he called it the Brotherhood, right?" she asks.

"I _know_!" Angel says. "Not that the Hellfire Club was that good either. I mean, I'm Catholic."

"There's got to be a better name. We could be like, the Mutant Liberators. Or something."

"The Mutant Liberation Army," Angel suggests.

"Yeah!" Mystique cheers. "Let's ask Magneto to change it when we get back."

"Right on," Angel says. "But first I guess we'd better go get those damn blueprints."

"Piece of cake," Mystique says. She picks up the Stark Industries security badge Angel swiped at the hotel bar last night and stares at it for a moment before transforming into a perfect replica of the man pictured on it. "Do I look like Jack Hanson to you?"

"You could be twins," Angel says with a grin.

"And what did he say his job was exactly?"

"Well, he told me he was working on something very top secret, which might just have been to impress me. Or it might have been a neural inhibitor."

"Only one way to find out, I guess," Mystique says. She shifts back to the unassuming brunette she'd been yesterday. "Let's check out of the hotel and get going." They leave a generous tip for the maid, pack up their small suitcases, and drop off the key.

Out in the parking lot, Mystique asks, "You ready to drive the getaway vehicle?"

"Absolutely." Angel gets behind the wheel of their rented Ford Falcon. "Next time we should get a convertible," Angel says.

"Oh my God, totally," Mystique says. She's already shifted back to Jack Hanson, an empty briefcase on her lap. The words sound incongruous coming from a middle-aged white man with a serious face, and they both crack up laughing.

Mystique's part of the mission goes off fairly smoothly. The drug Angel had slipped in his drink the previous night ensures that the real Jack Hanson is in no shape to come into work, and Mystique's gotten much better at bluffing her way through situations where she doesn't really belong. She's found that as long as she acts confident, people will rarely question her. Especially not when she's inhabiting a white, male body like this one. She finds Jack's name on a directory posted by the elevator. When a secretary asks her if she can help her find anyone, she smiles and says, "Just looking for Alex."

"Alex Hudson?"

"Yes."

"Twelth floor, Mr. Hanson."

"Thanks so much, sweetie," Mystique says. She gets on the elevator and heads for the 14th floor, which is where she'd seen Jack Hanson's name listed. She greets her secretary and closes the door to her office. She explores her desk and finds a bottle of vodka in the bottom drawer and a stack of blueprints in the middle drawer. She leaves the vodka and tucks the blueprints into her briefcase. Then she tells Jack's secretary that he's stepping out for a meeting on the golf course. His secretary smiles and wishes him luck.

Mystique struts out to meet Angel at the end of the corporation's huge parking lot. Angel looks so cool behind the wheel of their car, even if it's not a convertible.

"Mission accomplished?" Angel asks.

"Hell yes," Mystique says, with a grin that looks out of place on Jack Hanson's face.

Angel laughs and says, "Let's get out of here, then."

A few hours into their drive back to D.C., they stop at a diner for lunch. Both women get hamburgers and French fries, and they laughingly look over their stolen blueprints while they eat.

"Does this make any sense to you?" Mystique asks.

"Looks like a hat. An ugly hat," Angel replies.

When their waitress comes by to bring them fresh Cokes, she looks at the blueprints and whistles. "Wow, that sure looks complicated!"

Mystique shrugs. "We're complicated women."

"Mmm-hmm, and would you complicated ladies like some dessert today?"

Mystique and Angel exchange quick glances before saying, in unison, "Absolutely."


End file.
